The Charles W. Morgan: A 'lucky ship' with a proud history

The first in a series that traces the history of the Morgan, which started with the prosperity of New Bedford’s whaling industry and continues now.

By STEVE URBON

NEW BEDFORD — This city's harbor was a busy place on July 21, 1841.

Five commercial schooners set out for New York and Philadelphia. Two new whaling ships were launched, one at the Fairhaven shipyard of Fish and Huttleston, the other at the New Bedford shipyard of Jethro and Zacharia Hillman.

The latter was named the Charles W. Morgan after its first owner, a Quaker merchant. In September of that year the Morgan would set out on its first voyage, the first chapter of an odyssey that will eventually, next summer, lead back to the city where she was born.

That first voyage, with a crew made up mostly of Martha's Vineyard residents, would be typically grueling.

The Morgan spent three years, three months and 27 days at sea, first in the Azores and then around Cape Horn to the Pacific.

In this first of 37 voyages, the Morgan's crew of about 35 men would kill and "try out" 59 whales, rendering their blubber into oil for the lamps of the world and packing it away in 32-gallon casks.

She eventually returned to New Bedford with 2,963 casks of whale oil, which was almost the total capacity of the ship.

During the course of the next 80 years, the Morgan would build a reputation as a "lucky ship," surviving countless storms and an attack by Pacific islanders.

She was profitable as well, with only one cargo worth less than $50,000, according to the historians at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, today's home of the Morgan. The ship's biggest payday was $165,407.35; the smallest $8,977.50.

In the course of her career, the Morgan would bring home 54,483 barrels of whale oil and 152,934 pounds of whale bone.

The Morgan carried 13,000 square feet of sail, an immense surface that would enable this wide-hulled workhorse to make nine knots.

As the years passed, the Morgan's crews became more and more ethnically diverse as men joined the ship at her ports of call around the world. All told, the Morgan would be manned by 1,500 men from more than 50 countries.

She also appeared in three movies, one during her whaling days in 1916, "Miss Petticoats," and two in her retirement: "Down to the Sea in Ships" in 1922 and "Java Head," 1923.

The Morgan saw the heyday and eventual decline of the whaling industry as petroleum was being refined as an alternative. Her relatively brief final voyage began Sept. 9, 1920, and ended on May 29, 1921.

The ship was to spend the next three years at a pier in New Bedford Harbor, and there was every expectation that she would be scrapped like so many others.

But there were other threats as well. On June 30, 1924, the flaming wreck of the steamer Sankaty drifted across the Acushnet River and struck the Morgan. Miraculously, the Fairhaven Fire Department saved the ship, but it was badly charred. It needed rescue, and found it.

Enter Col. Edward H. R. Green, heir to one of the world's biggest fortunes, that amassed by his tight-fisted mother, Hetty Green, the "witch of Wall Street."

Col. Green did what few could do: single-handedly finance the repair and exhibition of the Morgan at his Round Hill estate in South Dartmouth. Perhaps it was destiny. His family's fortune began in the whaling industry in the 1800s, and even included a few years of ownership of the Morgan.

In 1925, he formed an organization to preserve the Morgan, Whaling Enshrined, Inc. It would seek to preserve not only the ship but other relics of the whaling industry.

Green wanted "to create and foster an interest in the history of whaling and the trades which are subsidiary thereto; to promote historical research; to collect documents and relics and to provide for their proper custody; to acquire and preserve other vessels of historical interest; to take and hold historic sites and to care for them; and generally to discover, procure and preserve whatever may relate to general history and antiquity."

Green, president and treasurer, built a marine park at his estate which, alongside the Morgan, was opened to the public and became a popular attraction.

But Whaling Enshrined didn't survive the death of Green in 1936. Funds for the Morgan soon ran out, and the trustees made a valiant attempt to raise money to replace what they had lost.

The effort failed, some say because the people who could afford to contribute weren't interested in the mission of the group, and those who were didn't have the money.

The Morgan was deteriorating, and the hurricane of 1938 left her in tatters, but not finished yet.

There would be one last push to save the Morgan.

In 1939, the Morgan Fund Committee was formed with the objective of moving the Morgan out of Round Hill and back to New Bedford. But, with the Depression and the start of war in Europe, the money never materialized.

In 1941, at the start of the country's involvement in World War II, the trustees of Whaling Enshrined took the fateful step of agreeing to take the Morgan to Mystic and the Mystic Historical Association, which one day would change its name to Mystic Seaport.

It was a decision that would reverberate to the present day. The Morgan, last of the wooden whaleships, was a precious piece of New Bedford's history that would be lost to Mystic for generations, a fact that still gnaws at New Bedford residents, even those who are too young to have known the Morgan as anything but a Connecticut exhibit.

In 1966, the Morgan was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark. In 1968, Mystic Seaport did an initial restoration and preservation project, and in 2010 began a multi-million-dollar out-of-water restoration began that is about to restore the ship to seaworthy status.

Last summer, New Bedford officials and preservationists attended the relaunch of the Morgan and expressed a debt of gratitude to those who stepped in and accomplished what New Bedford could not.

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